Ok, finally decided to swap shift levers. Ran into some weirdness. Under the console was a surprise from the PO. Rather than a cover on the "tunnel", I found more electrical tape than I've ever seen wrapped around a "frame". I mean, I guess it was effective, but how do you lose the cover? Got that off hoping to have clear access to the bolts holding everything to the "lid" of the trans. Nope. Looks like 4 bolts. 2 of them look like no problem, but the rear 2 are under the tunnel with little headroom. My questions:

Am I right in thinking I need to unbolt the 4 bolts this in order to swap shift levers? Service Manual is pretty vague. I see little chance of separating the top of the lever from the bottom "squared off" section. Does the bell looking collar piece on the bottom just turn and get "clocked" in without unbolting?

If I need to unbolt that "lid" , is there a trick to getting the rear bolts? Stubby ratcheting wrench from under the car? Cut tunnel (yikes).

Pics show the current shifter and the replacement. You can see one of the bolts is a little tricky, and one is totally hidden.

 

If you can get the bell thing at the bottom of the shifter apart, you won't need to pull the cover. It's supposed to push down and turn. I couldn't get mine apart on my 95 when I was doing a new clutch, but you're going to have to get it apart to install the new shifter. I would carefully examine the new part to see how exactly it fits and then see about getting the old one off.

 

Update. Success. I was able to get the old one out by pushing and turning. There are some decent youtube videos I found by searching ax15 shifter remove. Wasn't TOO bad. New shift lever is from a TJ and is a bit longer than the old one, but fits perfect.

Thanks everyone for the advise/help.

 

Glad you got it. I was going to suggest you unbolt the crossmember and lower the trans down a bit.

 

Nice!!!! Good job! Now you have a new shifter and a better familiarity with the transmission!

As Dave mentioned, really the only way to get at the bolts on the shifter (without gumby arms or cutting) is to lower the transmission a bit. In your case you'd still have had to separate the shifter from the plate, so it would have been a lot of extra work that I'd only have recommended if you just couldn't get the old shifter off (and hence would have had to do some careful cutting). The other factor with removing that plate is that it opens up the transmission (you can pour gear oil in there to fill the transmission) so you need to take care that junk doesn't fall into the transmission.

If you find yourself needing to do a clutch in the future - you'll find that it's easier than it appears to get those bolts off once you've got a jack under the transmission and have lowered it a couple of inches. Despite 300k and 23 years of salty winters, those bolts came right out for me and were pretty easy to locate by feel when re-installing. Unlike most of the stuff under the vehicle, the salt and moisture seemed to not reach that far up the transmission. It is, of course, still a lot of blind wrenching and "feel". I had worried I'd break the bolts at first (and have to drill them out) and then once they were out, I worried that I'd have trouble with aligning the shifter with the receiving part while trying to get the bolts back in, but it all seemed to fall right into place.